Chapter Text
Zane strode the top of Borg tower in relief. They were back in Ninjago again, Garmadon had been defeated, and all the SOG had been imprisoned. Actually, he did not know that for sure. There was one gang member in particular he hadn’t seen since he and his brothers had left Ninjago. Zane had asked the police if they had found him yet, they told him they didn’t think so, but they had made so many arrests, it was hard to know. They promised they'd be in touch with official records soon. Meanwhile, Zane decided to assist the cleanup effort. Not many people were up on the roof of Borg tower at the moment, only a few volunteers on the opposite side, rounding up trash. Most of the mess the SOG had created while using this place as their throne room had been removed, but it was far from perfect.
Zane set to work, grabbing a sheet of metal off the ground and sending it into the nearly empty green bin with a resounding clank. He grabbed another one and smiled. Repetitive tasks like these always calmed him. He nearly grabbed a shank of dark metal that looked like a hand until he jerked back in horror. It was a hand. And an arm. An entire, life-size, black, robotic arm. Zane glanced around and wondered, half-jokingly, if there were any other robot arms laying around.
There were. He saw it suddenly. A second hand, barely attached to its arm, was laying not 10 feet from it’s twin. The more he looked, the more everything looked more like robotic parts. Gears, wires, fans, shoulder plates, most of the same black color, but all, unmistakably, nindroid. Zane looked frantically now, flipping over metal scraps to find more parts, not daring to touch them. Feet, ball and socket joints, switches, circutboards, legs, torn jacket bits, a torso; Zane knew who it was. He flipped the last metal scrap. A black biker's helmet and a cracked red visor.
Mr. E.
Zane stared at his former nemesis in horror. His fans kicked into high gear, making him feel dizzy. The helmet was like it always had been, but no more did red eyes gleam inside. His head had been carelessly ripped off his neck and wires protruded from every conceivable exit. Zane thought he might be sick. He dropped to his knees, lightheaded and breathing fast. He sat with his eyes closed for several minutes; he strangely felt like he was the one who’d been dismantled. When did this happen? Who had been powerful enough to fight him and win? Lloyd? No… his power hadn’t returned until recently; Zane knew no one on his side had done this. He was simply fooling himself. He wanted to believe that it had been an accident, that Mr. E had just fallen apart after a great fall, but he had seen the wires spilling out of his arms, torso and neck. They had burst apart completely. Someone had deliberately torn Mr. E apart. Zane wondered why he felt so crushed. This was the ruthless gang member who had beat and battered him, furious but silently, till the point of system failure. Maybe it was that Zane felt a strange connection to him: he too was a single nindroid in a group of humans. He kept his eyes closed, thinking about all the ways Mr. E was so similar to himself, but his eyes snapped open at the thought of a single question: Is his CPU intact?
Zane looked at the helmet, cracked and dented. He had obviously fallen from a height, but, what if the helmet had been enough to protect it? He didn’t want to do it. He didn’t want to feel the shock and depressive weight again when he found the CPU damaged. But the hope wriggling inside him would not diminish.
Zane bent forward, and gingerly touched the helmet. Moving his hands to the base, he tenderly inched the helmet off. After little encouragement, it promptly slid off, revealing the boyish face and dead eyes of Mr. E. Zane stifled a gasp, he was looking at his face for the first time, and without permission, too. He quickly and carefully turned his head over, searching the back for an access panel. He found it and gently pushed in. After a moment, out popped the CPU. Zane quickly scanned it. Undamaged. Zane sighed in relief and delight, quickly removing it. He held it gently in his hands, then held it close to his chest. He vowed to then and there to take what he could back home, and to repair his broken enemy.